The Countess De Charny - Volume II (35 page)

MASTER GAMAIN EEAPPEAKS. 287

honest man, — and if any person ever deserved that title it certainly was Roland, — never did an honest man find himself face to face with a more repulsive-looking, low-lived scoundrel.

Roland’s first feeling was one of intense repugnance, as he surveyed his visitor from head to foot; but noticing how the man tottered on his crutches, it was in a tone of pity that he finally said : —

“Sit down, citizen. You seem to be suffering.” “I should think I was suffering,” grunted Gamain. “I have been ever since that Austrian hussy poisoned me.”

An expression of disgust passed over Roland’s face as he heard these words, and he exchanged glances with his wife, who was partially hidden from view in the alcove.

” Was it to denounce the perpetrator of that crime you came here?” asked Roland. “That crime and others.”

” Can you furnish any proofs of the truth of your allega-tions?”

“As for that, you ‘ve only got to go with me to the Tuileries, and see the closet.” “What closet?”

“The closet where that scoundrel kept his valuables. Oh, I might have known some deviltry was going on when that Austrian wench said to me, in that wheedling way of hers: ‘You must be tired, Gamain; take this glass of wine. It will do you good.’ I might have known the wine was poisoned.” “Poisoned?”

“Yes. I might have known that men that help kings to hide their treasures wouldn’t be allowed to live long afterwards,” added Gamain, with an expression of intense hatred on his face. ” The closet I ‘m speaking of is a secret closet built in the wall in which Citizen Capet hid a lot of his money and papers.”

“But how did you come to know anytliing about tlie existence of this closet?”

288 LA COMTESSE DE CHARNY.

“Because I was sent for — me and my apprentice — to come from Versailles, and fix a lock that the king had made, but that wouldn’t work.”

. “But this closet was probably broken open and plundered on the 10th of August,”

“Kot much danger of that,” responded Gamain, sententious ly.

“Why do you say that?”

” Because I ‘11 defy anybody in the world but him and me to find it — much less to open it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure and certain.”

” When did you and the king make this closet?”

“I can’t say exactly; but it was more than a year before he ran away. Capet sent to Versailles for me. My wife did n’t want me to go. She had a presentiment. She says to me: * The king ‘s in a bad fix, and you ‘11 get yourself into trouble if you have anything more to do with him.’ But I says to her, says I : ‘ When he sends to me about a matter connected with my trade, why, I ‘ve got to go, as he ‘s a pupil of mine — ‘ “

” In short, my friend, you came to Paris in spite of your wife’s advice.”

“Yes, but T ‘d have done much better if I had listened to her. I should n’t have been in this fix if I had. But they shall pay for it.”

“Try not to detain me any longer than you can help, my friend. All my time belongs to the nation, and I have n’t a minute to waste.”

“Well, he showed me a secret lock that wouldn’t work. He had made it himself, which shows that he would n’t have sent for me at all if he could have helped it — the traitor! And he says to me: ‘ Why don’t it work?’ says he, and I looked at it, and says I to him : ‘ Do you know why this lock won’t work?’ ‘Ko,’ says he; ‘ if I did, I shouldn’t ask you.’ * Well, it don’t work. Sire,’ says I, — they called the scamp Sire in those days , you know , —

MASTER GAMAIN EEAPPEARS. 289

‘ it don’t work because it don’t.’ And then I sliowed him why it would n’t. It was plain enough, but I don’t expect I can make you understand, because you don’t know as much about lock-making as the king does , — but it would n’t work because the projection on the key pressed so hard on the beard of the lock that the spring could only go half way around the circle. You understand, don’t you? You see, the width of the beard being six lines, that of the shoulder should have been only one line.”

“I see,” said Eoland, though he really did not understand a single word of the explanation.

“Says the king, — you know they still called the infamous tyrant that in those days, — ‘ Upon my word, that ‘s so. Well, Gamain, please do what I don’t know how to do half as well as you do, my master.’ ‘ And not your master only,’ says I, ‘ but master of masters, master of all ! ‘ “

“Well?”

“So I set to work; and while I worked Capet talked with my assistant, whom I have always suspected of being an aristocrat in disguise. When I came downstairs, bringing the iron door with the lock fitted into it with me, the king said: ‘Now, Gamain, come with me.’ He led the way, and I followed him. He took me first into a bedroom, and from there into a dark passage leading into the dauphin’s room. It was so dark we had to light a candle. ‘ You hold the candle, Gamain, so I can see,’ the king says to me. Then he raised a wooden panel, and behind it I saw a round hole about two feet wide. Then, seeing my surprise: ‘ It ‘s a safe I ‘ve made to keep my money in,’ says he; ‘and now I want it closed with this iron door.’ ‘ It won’t take long to do that,’ says I, ‘ for the hinges are on already.’ So I hung the door, and didn’t have a bit of trouble doing it. It seemed to shut itself almost. Then we put the j)anel back, and so good-night. Not a single sign of closet, door, or lock could you see.”

“And you think the king took all this trouble merely to make a safe place to keep his money in?”

VOL. IV. — 19

290 LA COMTESSE DE CHAKNY.

” Oh ! tliat was ouly au excuse. He tried to fool me, but I was too smart for him. He says to me : ‘ Now help me count the money I’m going to put in the closet.’ So we counted two millions in double louis; bat all the while we were doing it I watched his valet putting in pile after pile of papers, and says I to myself : ‘ This closet was made to hide papers in. This talk about money is all bosh.’”

” VVhat do you think, Madeleine? ” asked Roland, bend-ing over his wife so Gamain could not hear what he said.

“I think this is a very important disclosure, and that not another moment should be lost.”

Roland rang, and an usher appeared.

“Is there a carriage here?” asked the minister.

“Yes, citizen.”

“Have it brought to the door at once.”

“So you’ve had enough of me,” said Gamain, rising. The words were uttered in a very surly tone.

“Why do you think so?”

“Because you’ve called your carriage. Government ministers must have their carriages, even under a republic, it seems.”

“Ministers will always have carriages, my friend,” replied Roland, “not as a luxury, but simply as a matter of economy.”

“Economy!”

“Yes, to save time, the most precious thing in the world.”

“Then I will have to come again, I suppose.”

“What for?”

“To show you where the safe is.”

“That will not be necessary. I have ordered the carriage so we can go there now.”

“Where?”

“To the Tuileries.”

“That ‘s all right, then.”

” But how about the key? ” asked Roland. “It is n’t at all likely that the king left it in the door.”

MASTER G AM AIN RE APPEARS. 291

“Of course not. He ‘s not such a fool as he looks.”

“Then you had better take your tools with you.”

“What for?”

“To open the safe.”

“What do you call that?” exclaimed Gamain, drawing a key from his pocket. “I studied that lock well, feeling sure I should want to get into that closet some day.”

“The man is a scoundrel,” Madame Eolaud whispered to her husband.

” Then you think — “

” I think that in our present situation we have no right to refuse any information fortune sends to help us to a knowledge of the truth.”

“Here it is! ” exclaimed Gamain, twirling the key.

“And do you think,” asked Roland, with a disgust he could not wholly conceal, ” that a key made from memory, after a lapse of eighteen months, will oj^en that door?”

“At the very first turn, I hope. A man is n’t master of masters for nothing.”

“The citizen minister’s carriage is read}-,” said an usher.

“Shall I accompany you?” asked Madame Roland.

“Yes, if there are any papers I shall intrust them to you. You are the most honest man of my acquaintance. Come, my friend,” he added, turning to Gamain.

Gamain followed them, muttering between his teeth: “Didn’t I say I ‘d pay you some day, you Capet? “

Pay him for what?

For the king’s kindness to him, of course.

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CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE RETREAT OF THE PRUSSIANS.

While Garaain’s key made from memory opens the iron safe with marvellous ease; while the closet yields up the papers intrusted to its keeping, — papers which, in spite of the absence of those confided to Madame Campan by the king himself, are to have a fatal influence over the destiny of the prisoners in the Temple ; and while Roland examines these documents one by one, vainly searching for some proof of Danton’ s alleged treachery, — while all this is going on, let us see what the ex-minister of justice is doing.

We call Danton an ex-minister because, as soon as the Convention was fairly organised, he had no alternative but to tender his resignation.

So he mounted the rostrum, and said: “Before expressing my opinion in regard to the first decree of this Convention, permit me to resign the functions bestowed upon me by the Legislative Assembly. I received them amid the roar of cannon. Now, a union of our forces has been effected, and the organisation of our nation’s representatives has likewise been accomplished; consequently, I am now merely a representative of the people, and it is in that character I now speak.”

To the words, “A union of our forces has been effected,” Danton might have added, “and the Prussians have been defeated,” for this speech was made on the 21st of September, and it was on the previous day that the battle of Valmy had been fought, though Danton was not yet aware of the fact.

THE KETKEAT OF THE PRUSSIANS. 293

So he contented himself with saying: “Let us dispel, once for all, those phantoms of dictatorship that so alarm the people. Let us declare, here and now, that there can be no Constitution but such an one as the people are willing to accept. Up to this time we have endeavoured to arouse the people against tyranny. Now let the laws be made as terrible against the persons who violate them as they have been annihilating to tyranny. Let every criminal be punished. And let us declare that the rights of property, territorial, industrial, and personal, shall be sacredly and permanently maintained.”

With his accustomed shrewdness, Danton had detected and allayed the two principal sources of uneasiness Frenchmen feared for, — their liberty and their property.

And, strange to say, who was most solicitous concerning the rights of property, do you suppose? The new proprietors, those who had purchased property a day or two be-fore, and still owed for three-fourths of it. These were the people who straightway became more conservative than the old landed proprietors. The nobility prized tlieir lives far above their ancestral domains, — the fact that they abandoned their estates to save their lives proves this conclusively; whereas the peasant or the purchaser of confiscated property prized their bit of ground far above life itself, and stood guard over it, musket in hand. In fact, nothing in the world would have induced them to leave it.

Danton understood this, and realised the necessity of reassuring not only present property -holders, but those who were likely to own property in the years to come ; for the one great idea of the Kevolution was embodied in the following paragraph : —

” All Frenchmen should be property owners, not that the possession of property makes men Letter morally, ])ut it makes tliem hetter citizens by inspiring them with a feeling of their in(](i)enilence.”

The spirit of the Revolution is also admirably summed up in some other words uttered by Danton.

294: LA COMTESSE DE CIIAKNY.

” Guiimutoo the abolishincut of every sort of despotism, and the sacreduess of all rights of property. lu other words, a man has a right to govern himself; consequently, a man has a right to preserve the fruits of his industry.”

And who said all this? The man who bears the odium of June 20th, August 10th, and September 2nd, — the god of tempests, who now takes upon himself the duties of a pilot by throwing out those two anchors which are the safeguard of nations, — Liberty and Property.

The Girondist could not understand this; those honest Girondists who had taken a strong dislike to the fickle Danton, for had they not seen him refuse the dictatorship at the very moment he was begging for it in order to prevent the massacre?

The Convention finally passed two resolutions ; namely :

” No Constitution can be considered valid until it has been accepted by the people.

‘* The nation is responsible for the safety of life and property.”

The next day the news of the victory at Valmy reached Paris, and caused general rejoicing. It was considered a much more decisive triumph than it really was, and as a natural consequence, the country’s mood suddenly changed from abject fear to sublime audacity. The clubs belched forth blood and thunder.

“If the King of Prussia was conquered, why was he not bound and cast into prison, or at least driven back across the Ehine?” men cried, angrily.

Then, in lower tones, they added: “It is very evident that Dumouriez has betrayed us. He was bribed by the Prussians, unquestionably.”

Dumouriez was already receiving the usual reward for a great service, — ingratitude.

But the King of Prussia did not consider himself beaten, by any means. He had attacked the heights of Valmy, and had not succeeded in taking them, that was all.

THE RETREAT OF THE PRUSSIAXS. 295

Neither army liad been driven from its position. Before, the French had been continually losing ground; this time the French had merely held their own. The loss of life was about equal on both sides.